Now that Christopher Nolan has twice in a row proven that deep movies, epic movies, even, can dominate the box office, I have a plea.
Nolan's The Odyssey told a trans millennial tale.
And, Jesus, people love it.
Patrick O'Brian wrote twenty books about Lucky Jack Aubrey and Estephan Maturin.
I am 16 books into O'Brian's tale for the sixth time.
I can assure you, those twenty books, in composite, are an epic.
So, somebody, hire Christopher Nolan to bring us, probably several movies, that do that epic.
A minor problem is that back awhile somebody made a great movie - Master and Commander - a mostly invented story based on the O'Brian Twenty, that was one of the great movies of its time.
So, we already have the main characters flawlessly depicted, when the actors depicting them (Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany) were much younger.
Too many years have passed for them to play their parts again.
Nolan, we have a problem.
The only obvious solution to the problem is to re-cast Aubrey and Maturin from the current flock of stars.
Chris Pine did a great young James T Kirk after all.
But I don't think an epic should ignore heritage.
I have a better idea.
Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany, Jack and Stephen in Master and Commander are - I hope - still alive.
So, leverage them in the epic.
Have the entire multi-movie epic intermixed with introductory, mid-plot exit, summary "here's what really happened, etc. etc. etc. vignettes as two old men reminiscing, drinking sometimes coffee, sometimes port, and starring Crowe and Bettany, be major and integral parts of the multiple movies, the epic.
I have no idea who should play Jack in the non-reminiscent component, but Stephen should be played by Ryan Gosling.
